About Me
I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. I teach photographers web design and professional skills. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.
Book
I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Its strong points include an introduction to Python, and better coverage of Django 1.0 than nearly anybody else. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.
Colophon
Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.
Pile o'Tags
Stuff I Use
Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii
Spam Report
At least 67589 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.
International Freedom From Stupid Software Patents Day
LZW -- that is, the formerly patented Lempel-Ziv Welch compression algorithm -- is free today. The footnote on the Free Software Foundation's GIF history page says:
The Unisys patent expired on 20 June 2003 in the USA, in Europe it expired on 18 June 2004, in Japan the patent expired on 20 June 2004 and in Canada it expired on 7 July 2004. The U.S. IBM patent expired 11 August 2006, The Software Freedom Law Center says that after 1 October 2006, there will be no significant patent claims interfering with employment of the GIF format.
(Emphasis mine.) The patent they're referring to there is of course on LZW compression, not on GIF89a itself. LZW is used in other things, like TIFF compression, and, uh, V.42bis modems.
Once I understood the algorithm (David Mertz's Text Processing in Python has a good explanation of how it works), I thought, hey, that's really clever. Then I thought: that is what Unisys has been milking for patent royalties all these years?
I propose that today, October 1, become known as International Freedom From Stupid Software Patents Day. Let's celebrate.
"There really hasn't been any reason to use GIF for years PNG is better."
PNG transparency is not supported by IE. There are javascript workarounds, etc, but they don't all work for every use.
Why is PNG better?
Jessica...
IE can't handle pages that are actually W3 compliant code either.
It's IE that is crap.... not PNG
IE is another example of Inertia.
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> Then I thought: that is what Unisys has been milking for patent royalties all these years?
Isn't inertia great? There really hasn't been any reason to use GIF for years -- PNG is better. The same issue exists with MP3 -- lossless formats with an open standard exist, but not enough people use them to change the defacto standard.